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Before we get to the meat of this log, and the reason why the forum is in its current state, let's quickly go over the updates to Aura last week.
As requested by the community I added a new command to reset seal stones, resetsealstone, as this was frequently needed in the recent past. To reset a stone you simply use that command on a specific seal stone and then either restart the channel or reload the scripts. Aside from that my own changes were limited to minor improvements and bug fixes.
From your side, the community, we got new NPCs for Nekojima and the Ceo Golem Field Boss from eotetb, and valdeza added a prof command, which can be used to change an item's proficiency, and Artisan upgrades, with a respective feature setting to enable them. Thanks guys!
Now, the reason why the forum was down is an unpleasant one. As my Patrons already know, Nexon has honored us with their attention once more and sent two DMCAs, one to my server provider and one to Patreon, regarding our use of copyrighted characters and stories in Aura, links to its repository, and my use of screen shots on my Patreon page. I disabled the forums for the time being and removed all links and screen shots from my Patreon, but Patreon removed the page anyway, just in case.
The tricky part is, whether they're right about their claims or not, the "characters and stories" (NPCs and quests) are a point that can be claimed to be illegal in Aura, and since I'm not particularly looking forward to a legal battle, the only option to make Aura "legal" would be to remove those. We could create custom NPCs and quests, you could "recreate" the official content "yourself" if you wanted, but it would be missing from Aura's main repository. The core team would then focus on just that, the core, without official NPCs and story based quests. (That doesn't include things like spawns, warps, party quests, item scripts, etc.)
We would basically only add the functions needed to implement the official content, but not the (story/character based) content itself. While this option is far from being optimal, the only other, legal, option would be to close Aura, and I'm sure none of us want that. I highly dislike this, but we might not have much of a choice.
I'll keep you posted about our decision.

I heard back from GitHub, regarding my inquiries on why we weren't allowed to remove the infringing content before the entire repository was disabled, and whether we could still do that. Unfortunately, it's their understanding that Nexon claimed the entire repo to be infringing, and hence the only thing that can be done is a counter notice.
A counter notice however would mean that, even if we remove the scripts, we proclaim to Nexon that everything else in Aura is legal, which leaves them with two options, a) take action against us, or b) acknowledge that Aura in that form is legal and can be distributed and used. Whether or not Aura is actually legal, which none of us here can say with 100% certainty, I ask you, what do you think is Nexon more likely to do?
I hope you understand why we're struggling with a decision. We don't want to give up Aura, and in some capacity we'd probably keep working on it for ourselves, no matter what, but one has to ask themselves, is it worth the risk and trouble? Does what we have to gain outweigh what we have to lose?
I ask you for a bit more patience. In the meantime you can still get Aura from any of the numerous forks that Nexon didn't take down (gj btw), it's still compatible with the latest update, and if you have any questions or problems feel free to ask on the chat.

I was able to create an account and log into your server, I'm not sure why you aren't. The login server at least, I couldn't get in-game, presumably because you didn't use your public IP in the servers.txt (system/db/). Could you try to use 127.0.0.1 in your client.xml? And if that doesn't work, try what happens if you use your public IP in the servers.txt. That shouldn't be necessary for the login server, but who knows what the client is doing there.

The code/language is one barrier, the other, bigger one is reading and updating the packets correctly, as there've been quite a few changes since January. Basically, you need to log the packets that need updating, and then you compare them to the ones in Aura to fix them. Which ones need updating can only be determined by going in-game and checking if the functions are working.
For example, the packet that changes most frequently is the one with the op code 5209, the character information packet. This one being outdated usually means that you can't even move after logging in, or that you don't even get past the loading screen and crash. What you would do to update it is, like I said, log into NA with MabiPale active, and then compare the log to the AddCreatureInfo method in Aura, value by value, to search for differences. I imagine doing this without any knowledge about Aura, C#, or Mabi packets would be quite a complicated task though.

Yes and no.
It could work if you rename aura and exec getting a new identity aswell as someone else hosting it.
But it would have the same fate as aura sooner or later depending on how much nexon cares atm.
And if they find out that its basically the same thing with the same people then its pretty much the end of the line. Not worth the risk.

Let me clear two common misunderstandings in your statements, even though I'm not a lawyer either, and what I'm saying is only to the best of my knowledge as well.
This is basically false. A private server that is aiming to provide the same experience as you get on the official server can never be legal unless you have a license to operate it. You will be using official characters and stories, you advertise that people can play the game on your server (maybe also for free), and you're hurting the official publisher's business, be it ever so little. A publisher might be more likely to ignore you if the server is small, you don't make money, and you're not using stolen files, but it's still illegal.
Server emulators, which also affect the legality of the private servers running on them, are by no means legal either, they're a huge legal gray zone that is rarely tackled. For example, ignoring characters, stories, etc. there's the data. Items, monsters, all that good stuff we take from the clients. There are laws that protect databases in many countries, so you can't just take a collection of information and call it your own. But I've never heard of these laws being applied in this area.
Usually you also have to reverse engineer several parts of the client, which is another legal gray zone, because while you are allowed to RE software that is on your computer in many countries, and you're usually also allowed to publish the results of these efforts, that doesn't mean it's legal to code identical functions based on this data. You can easily infringe copyrights here, even if you wrote the code yourself and it's just similar. Even something as simple as packets could be problematic. This might be interesting for you: https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq
Note that I'm not necessarily saying it's illegal, but that it's a gray zone, or something that has never been enforced to my knowledge. Until you're in front of a judge you can't really be sure.
You're confusing copyright with trademark here. You can lose trademarks if you don't protect them, but you can't lose your copyright, you can freely choose where and when you want to protect it, or if at all.

The official game's story and NPCs are a pain in the ass anyways. Many people with some experience in story-writing (fan-fiction writers) and a little bit of game design knowledge can make an original story that has you travel the exact same dungeons and face the same challenges, while sticking to the theme of each chapter/book. Maybe this time the story won't involve the player being a fool and errand boy to every single NPC in the game.

What is the "Aura Project"?
The Aura Project is a community built around the development of "Aura", an open-source MMORPG server software. This forum was created to keep the world in the loop about the development progress, allow easy exchange between interested users, and for them to take part in the development and learning experience.
We aren't interested in operating servers, but solely in the development: learning about programming, MMORPGs, maintaining huge projects, working with other people, improving knowledge, exploring games we like in a new way, and experimenting with what could be.
How can I play this game?
As mentioned above, we're developing server software, we aren't operating actual servers that you can play on. You can however, use our programs, to run local servers on your own network if you're interested in seeing them in action.